Stub: First steps as an interpreter

Recently I've been thinking a lot about interpreting. I don't have enough time to write a full post today, but I just wanted to dash off a list of topics to fill out later.

• My recent volunteer interpreting at the Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution (人と防災未来センター) in Kobe
  
• My forthcoming volunteer interpreting for the Kyoto Prefectural International Center's "文化紹介デー" this Sunday.
• My first attempt at interpreting at my former host company, Mitsuba
• Whether NHK English news is being interpreted simultaneously, or whether a pre-prepared translation is simply being read.
• How it is possible for anybody to attempt simultaneous translation between English and Japanese and actually transmit over 80% of the original information
• Pros and cons of becoming a professional interpreter

I will try to modify this post sometime next week when I have some free time.

Stub: Homeless Linguist

Recently I talked with my friend Tetsuo about a really strange, interesting encounter I had with a homeless man who spoke flawless English, authored and edited the world's first Japanese-English collocation. Tetsuo was really interested about this story, but I had misplaced the man's name and the name of his book. I just spent the last two hours searching for it, and I think I finally found it. I will add to this post later, because it's a really interesting story, but for now I will just post the man's name and the title of his book.

• Title: 和英口語英語表現辞典 (Japanese-English Spoken English Expression Dictionary)
• Author: 後藤 正次 (Shoji GOTOU)
• Link to ISBN data on the Japanese National Diet Library website
• Link to the book on Yahoo! Books Japan

Boy, does it feel good to rediscover some long-lost bit of information that you feared would never be found!

My "trustship" of Japanese English

First off, am I forgetting English, or is "trustship" a word? Being surrounded by English that is half-right or completely wrong every day, especially when teaching, I fear that I'm starting to lose the ability to distinguish between bona fide English and Japanese home-brewed English. But this morning, in between my last e-mail and this one, I turned on the TV for a second to check out the news, and I saw a new commercial for Mitsubishi-UFJ Bank. It shows a man playing catch with his aging father, and he says (in Japanese) "I was always very serious when playing catch with my dad." Then the bank flashes their new slogan onto the screen: "Trustship." I attached a picture so you can see what I'm talking about. The Japanese word they use is 信託, which means "entrustment" or "trust" (as in charitable trust). I think it's great that they tried making a new word; it's very creative, but I suspect that a highly conservative bank didn't intend to do so. It's interesting viewing English through the eyes of non-native speakers, as they often try to match patterns (in this case, friendship and hardship are probably the models). During our first lesson, one of my favorite students, when asked what she would be doing in America after she moves there later this year due to her husband's transfer, responded that she would be "husband-sitting." This is probably my favorite pseudo-English phrase of all time. It was coined in earnest as she frantically struggled to express her feelings, and yet it bears a truth relevant to many so-called housewives (I don't hear the term homemaker much anymore, so I assume it's okay, i.e. sufficiently politically correct, to say housewives). To natives, it has a tongue-in-cheek sort of humor to it. I have heard so many interesting phrases like this, but I haven't made an effort to record them all, which I am starting to regret.